PingMe: A Task Reminder Service

Passing by on the Deck ad network this morning (at Andy Baio’s blog) I saw a new service called Tempo, which is a time tracking tool… but this is not a post about that product, but another from the same folks at Zetetic, called PingMe. I will take a look at Tempo at some other date.

PingMe is a task reminder tool that allows users to create, share, and get alerted about things. The old school use case would be creating tasks online and getting email or SMS reminders, but the one that caught my eye was Twitter integration.

Tasks are created using a simple editor, and are displayed in a post-it note format. Personally, I would rather a more straightforward list, with sorting based on various fields.

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PingMe - What *Should* You Be Doing?, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

Tags are supported, so I could click on reboot10 and just see those two tasks.

I thought the ‘pester’ option was interesting:

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PingMe - Pester, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

The Twitter integration works as advertised. Here’s a task I created in PingMe in my Twirl client:

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stoweboyd - twhirl 0.8.2, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

But when I tried creating a ping from Twitter, no go.

There is an elaborate text language for remote pings supporting email integration, but it doesn’t work from Twitter. Although I am following @gpm — the company’s Twitter bot — and receive messages from it, I can’t create tasks this way, although I would like to.

Here’s the sort of message supported in email:

3pm start the ribs at 300º

So I would expect to be able to twitter:

d grm 3pm start the ribs at 300º

or maybe @gpm?

At any rate this has to be added if I were to use the solution. Especially since I am using Remember The Milk, which has Twitter integration, and I can say

d rtm start the ribs (300º) at 3pm

and it works as advertised. Here I display the results in the Google Calendar integration:

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Google Calendar, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

(I have to confess, I wish RTM’s Gcal integration was a standard calendar, instead of this Ajax hackery. It shows well, but can’t sync with my iCal.)

So, my recommendation is that if you’d like task lists integrated in your Twittering, stick with Remember The Milk. RTM supports twitter queries, like these

!today

gets tasks due today (shortcut: !tod)

!tomorrow

gets tasks due tomorrow (shortcut: !tom)

!getdue friday

gets tasks due on the specified date (shortcut: !gd)

And reminders from RTM can be directed to Twitter, as well. I have my reminders set up now just to send to Twitter 30 minutes ahead of any task with a specific time.

(PS I wrote a fairly comprehensive write-up about using Remember The Milk’s Gmail integartion at Unclutterer: A Simple Way To Simplify Email.)